


A Light in the Dark

by thatpunnyperson



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Lydia is also a bit of a potty-mouth, lots of swearing, meridia's beacon is a problem, my dragonborn is a potty-mouth, so are the forsworn, the dragonborn and Lydia are pals, the stormcloaks surprisingly are not a problem
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-06 14:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11602935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatpunnyperson/pseuds/thatpunnyperson
Summary: Rooting through chests full of treasure and magical artifacts can be fun, but one should always watch out for the especially clingy things.Like Meridia's Beacon.Gods, I wish I'd known it would get stuck to my hand BEFORE I grabbed it, because then I would have DEFINITELY still stuck my hand in the chest because I like shiny thingsI admit, I have a bit of a problem.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> These characters aren't mine and I have purposely left all of the descriptions vague so that you can imagine it is your own Dragonborn being this idiotic.

A NEW HAND TOUCHES THE BEACON

Ah, fuck, I think. I had been warned about touching random shit lying in chests, but shiny objects and colorful objects and small objects and…

Okay, maybe I have a problem with touching shit in chests. I open chests and see the coins and circlets and rings and jewels and sometimes even armor or weapons and I gotta touch them. I just gotta. 

This object, though. Round and pearly white, it pulsed with a soft light that made me feel…warm and comfortable…like someone had just wrapped me in a warm blanket. And that was before I even touched it. I had to touch it. 

And then it yelled at me. 

And stuck to my hand. 

And now it won’t let go.

Using the light it shed, I make my way away from the chest and down the vast staircase that led up to the dragon lair I had just cleared. The dragon had been annoying but easy enough to kill and the word wall had given me a word to satisfy the soul I absorbed but the chest was what I was really there for. Guarded by a dragon? It must have cool shit in it. 

Nope. Just an angry white orb that wont let go of my hand. 

I tune out the voice that seems to be coming from inside my own skull and look more closely at the orb. It has small round divots in the surface and a smooth texture making me think that it might be used to reflect light. But if it gives off its own light, why would it be used to reflect light? Maybe to strengthen the light it reflects? 

Where does the orb even belong? Why the hell was it in that chest? Why wont it let go of my hand? What is it even called?

Meridia’s Beacon 

The name pops into my head as the questions swirl around and I feel a pull to the west. Should I follow the pull? Maybe it’s some kind of magic that’s trying to lure me to my death. 

Hell, no. 

I am not going to die because of a clingy orb. 

I get to the bottom of the stairs and trudge south out of the canyon because it seems like the right way to go, not because the pull also wants me to go south. I don’t take orders from orbs.

 

“So, run me through exactly what happened, again?” 

My housecarl, Lydia, is disappointed in me. That much is clear on her face.

“Well,” I begin. “I was fighting this dragon and it was breathing—“ 

Lydia cuts me off. “Yeah, no, I got the dragon fighting part. Breathes snow, sits on a rock wall, glares angrily at people. The part about the chest and the thing stuck to your hand is where you lost me.”

“Ah. Yes. Well, that’s where I also got lost,” I continue. “See, I reached into the chest because of the shiny stuff.”

“I understand well your love of shiny stuff,” Lydia says in a tired voice and looks pointedly to the pile of silver goblets on my dining room table. They were just so pretty and shiny and I had to have them. They were in locked display cases in the house of a guy I had literally just killed. No one had used them in a long time and no one was even going to use them again and it seemed like such a shame to leave them there.

I am jolted out of my thoughts by a sharp poke to my side. Lydia wants me to continue. Yes.

“So, my hand is in this chest, right?” Lydia waves her hand and motions me to keep the story going. “And I’m feeling around—feeling some pretty great things, I might add. Lots of coins, some big jewels, a lumpy piece of armor, and then this thing.” 

I raise my hand. 

“It stuck itself to my hand and will not let go.”

“And I’m assuming you tried several ways to get it off?” Lydia looks nonplussed.

“Yes!” I say, hurt that she would assume I hadn’t tried to get rid of it. Though, why would I? It’s warm and pearly and prettier than most jewels…

“Like…?” Lydia prompts.

“Like hitting it on several rocks and trying to lever it off with my sword.” I’m beginning to feel a little indignant now. Lydia is all judgey and all I did was find a cool looking orb that likes me so much it won’t let go.

“Hitting it on some rocks clearly did nothing,” Lydia says with a sigh. “Come on. Let’s go see if Farengar can figure out how to remove it.” She walks off towards the front door but I don’t follow.

“Farengar is an idiot,” I say. “The guy is condescending and has terrible memory. Every time I go to see him, he tells me I should join the Mages College in Winterhold.”

“Well, have you?” Lydia asks.

“I’m the Arch Mage, Lydia,” I reply, haughtily. 

“Then lets go tell Farengar that.”

“I have.”

“Maybe he didn’t hear you.”

“Lydia, I don’t want Farengar’s help with this.”

Lydia has one hand on the doorknob and sighs again. What’s with all of the sighing, I think to myself. 

“Fine,” Lydia says finally. “But we should at least have someone look at it and see if it’s having any ill effects on you.”

That’s actually kind of a good idea but I have no idea who or what she has in mind. Still, worst-case scenario, it ends up being a Daedra, but that doesn’t seem like something Lydia would do.

 

That’s because Lydia wants to take me to see Danica Pure-Spring in the Temple of Kynareth. I think I would rather risk it with a Daedra.

“It doesn’t look to be affecting you,” Danica says. “It doesn’t look to be doing anything, really, except for glow slightly.”

“See?” I look towards Lydia and gesture with my hand. “It’s not doing anything to me. Therefore, it’s not a problem.”

“You can’t hold a sword or a shield or even cast magic with that hand,” Lydia says in exasperation. “It is a problem if it’s preventing you from defending yourself. Danica’s observations only prove that it’s not actively killing you. A benign tumor is still a tumor.”

“So what would you have me do, huh?” I counter. “Go see if Farengar can fix it? Learn that he can’t? Go to the College of Winterhold and hope they can fix it? But they probably can’t as well? Cut my arm off?”

“Or—and I know how much you hate it—have someone with you while you travel, as protection? It may just decide to fall off one day. But, until them, if you can’t use that hand, you can’t fully protect yourself and no amount of complaining can change that.”

“I know what this orb is and I know what it wants. Why can’t I just go fix it myself and stop bothering with all this ‘consulting with physicians and magicians’ nonsense?”

Danica has long-since walked away; she had a temple to run and a thane and their housecarl arguing wasn’t doing anything to help heal the wounded staying in the temple. Lydia, however, had all but frozen.

“What,” I ask.

“You already know what it is?” Lydia asked carefully. “And what it wants? It’s sentient?”

“What? No, of course it’s not sentient,” I say. It’s a rock, orb, thing. It doesn’t have a mind… “At least, I don’t think it’s sentient. When I picked it up, a voice started yelling at me from inside my mind, but I thought that was just me being myself. Lot’s of things yell at me from inside my own mind.” Lydia looks like she’s about to hit me.

“Voices yelling at you after you touch what is clearly a magical artifact is not normal and should have clued you in to the fact that you probably just picked up a Daedric artifact.” All noise in the temple stops when she says that. 

“Out,” Danica is suddenly saying. “Take your Daedra nonsense out of my temple this instance. We will not have heretics sullying the holy ground belonging to Kynareth. Get out!” Lydia and I quickly run for the door because Danica is beginning to glow. Today is not the day to get killed by a priestess who happens to be a master of restoration magic. 

The two of us jog away from the temple and the Gildergreen just outside it, heading down the steps to the Plains District Market. 

“So, do you know which Daedric prince the artifact belongs to?” Lydia finally asks as we step back into Breezehome.

“I think Meridia,” I say. “When she was talking in my mind, she said something about a Mount Kilkreath in the west and I suddenly knew that the orb was called Meridia’s Beacon.”

“That makes sense,” Lydia agrees. “Mount Kilkreath used to be her largest sanctuary in Skyrim before Daedra worship was outlawed. She’s the ‘goddess of the dawn’ and despised the undead with a burning passion, according to most scholars. I would say that if we head west to Dragonbridge tomorrow morning, we can make it into town by nightfall and then scope out the ruins the following morning.”

“How the hell do you know so much about this temple?” I ask her in awe. “Are you secretly a Daedra worshipper or is Meridia speaking to you as well?”

“You literally bring random shit home from adventures and don’t bother to put it away properly. I once saw you come home and suddenly drop a bunch of weapons into the kitchen’s fire pit,” Lydia says. “Who do you think cleans everything up after you leave? One of the guards? Hell, no! They’re not allowed in here. I put away every weapon, all of your armor, and every piece of what I would classify as junk.” Lydia walks up and pokes me roughly in the chest to emphasize her points. “And, wouldn’t you believe it, I also shelf every book you bring home and haphazardly stack around the house. So, if I decide to sit down and read some of those books, then it’s because I deserve a little relaxation.” 

As if to prove her point, Lydia walks over the shelf by the door and pulls out a tome, tossing it to me. I flip through the pages and sure enough, there’s a brief description of Meridia and her temple.

“All right,” I say, closing the book and tossing it back to Lydia so reshelf. “Let’s get ready to travel tomorrow.”

 

Travelling is almost always fun. You get to breathe in the fresh Skyrim air, you get to watch the Skyrim wildlife lope their way across the landscape, and you get to meet other travellers also wandering across the province. However, there are those moments when travelling that make you really wish you had ridden horses instead of walking.

“How far have we gone so far?” I ask Lydia when we stop at a stream to rest. We had left Whiterun at about 6 that morning and had been walking for almost 5 hours. “I’m hungry and tired and my feet hurt and I don’t like it. When are we going to reach Rorikstead?”

“We are quite literally half a mile away from Rorikstead, my thane.”

“A whole half a mile?!” I roll over from where I sat down to rest and promptly end up face down in the stream. Lydia does nothing to help me.

“If you want, I can drag you the distance,” Lydia offers somewhat sarcastically.

“Not in this armor,” I say but I know she probably couldn’t understand me due to the water and streambed in the way. Still, I roll myself over and groan pitifully, knowing full well that I will soon have to pick myself up and keep walking. 

Lydia looks at me with a sour expression that quickly turns to determination as she draws her sword. Confused, I sit up and look around, sure that Lydia wouldn’t be drawing her weapon on me. 

THWACK

Well, the good news is that she wasn’t drawing her sword on me.

The bad news is that she was drawing her sword on something on me.

“I don’t know how that mudcrab was able to climb onto you like that but I have a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with that armor.” Lydia wipes the mudcrab goo—it’s technically blood but it’s too goopy to be real blood so I just call it goo—off of her sword and sheathes her weapons again. 

“Probably,” I say. I had decided to wear the Ebony Mail for this adventure because it is both comfortable and emits a poisonous cloud when I try to be sneaky. “This armor is just too nice to not wear.”

“Yeah, well it also has enough nooks and crannies for a mudcrab to hook into without you noticing,” Lydia grabs a cloth from their supplies and wipes down the back of my armor. “What if we hadn’t noticed and then it had snipped you in the neck?”

“Is ‘snipped’ the technical term or are you testing out some of the slang kids these days are using?”

“The point is—no more dramatically throwing yourself into rivers. Who knows what might get caught on your armor again.”

“Ugh, fine,” I agree humorously. 

We walk back onto the path and trudge the half-mile to Rorikstead. Since Rorikstead is at the point in Skyrim where the Reach, the Whiterun plains, and the Haafingar marshes meet, Lydia warns me that the road to Dragonbridge may be dangerous and that I’ll need to let her fight people without argument. I tell her that any arguments about her fighting people will come from the asses she’s about to kick, not me.

 

We are able to get to the next major crossroads before things really start attacking us. Just outside of Rorikstead, there’s a cabin full of skeevers. Lydia is able to deal with them quickly and effectively. 

Then, just down the road from the cabin was a saber cat, which proved to be a little more of a challenge. I hide behind a rock on the other side of the path and shoute encouraging phrases like “you got this” and “take ‘em down.” They don’t seem to have any effect on Lydia’s fighting, which opens up a realm of possibilities of seeing just how bombproof Lydia truly is.

But now there are five bandits and Lydia is getting tired and they’re hiding in the rocks—which I can respect as a defensive strategy because I am also hiding in the rocks again—and…and I still have one good hand. 

I pull out my sword, sneak out from behind my rock, and am promptly shot at by the archer who is hiding 10 feet from me. I run up to him, trying to dodge his arrow and miraculously succeeding, and bash him in the head with the handle of my sword, knocking him out cold. I turn to see Lydia successfully take down the woman she is fighting and then turn to a man who was trying to catch her from behind, deftly blocking his over-the-head swing with a warhammer. 

I scan the rocks lining the road, looking for the fourth person and finding her in a well-sheltered area. If I could use a bow, I could easily get her, I think, but I can’t with Meridia’s Beacon still stuck to my hand. I settle for charging towards her with my sword drawn because what the hell.

Lydia does not like this strategy and passive-aggressively trips me as I run past her, sending me sprawling. My sword clatters forward a few feet from me and, as I scramble to grab it, the man Lydia is fighting takes a swing at me. I raise my hands in defense, knowing it’s going to hurt.

And, suddenly, the guy is staggering backwards directly onto Lydia’s sword. But, if Lydia hadn’t sent him wheeling back, what had? This was what was running through my mind when the world went inexplicably dark.


	2. Chapter 2

I wake up on a damp cobblestone floor that smells of both moss and old metal. So, probably a cage. My hands are tied behind my back and my legs feel like they’ve been bound by something so tight that it’s cutting off circulation. I try to roll over onto my back and find out two things: that there is a wall next to my face, and that, no, my legs are not bound at all. I’ve apparently been resting on them in an awkward position and cut off my own circulation. Figures. 

Meridia’s Beacon is still on my hand, which is good, but it feels slimy instead of its normal glossiness. Which is weird. Why would it be slimy? 

“You’re awake,” a man’s voice says. “Good.” I freeze.

What? 

“How long was I out?” I ask slowly, not turning to look at where the voice in coming from.

“Several hours but I don’t blame you,” the man says and I can hear the sound of bare feet walking on the cobblestone floor. “I hit you really hard.”

Bare feet? This barefooted hippie hit me hard enough to knock me out cold? Me? The person who, according to Lydia, has the thickest skull in all of Skyrim?

Lydia.

“Hey, just out of curiosity,” I begin to say, trying to stretch my now-not-numb legs out. “Where’s the lady that was with me?” It’s a moment before the man responds. 

“The Nord woman?” the man says with obvious disgust in his voice. “We left her injured in the road. No sense in bringing her with us just to have her put up a fight the whole way. She’ll die like the Nords want us to die.”

Now, I was beginning to put the pieces together. The bare feet, the hitting me on the head, and the disdain for Nords meant this guy was a Forsworn.

“So, why take me?” I ask.

“You have something we want.”

“What could possibly have that the Forsworn would want?”

“That orb on your hand.” Ah, that makes sense. “We tried to take it from you but your hand would not let go, so we tried to cut it off and it still remained firmly attached to your hand.”

That explained the sliminess of the Beacon, then. 

“We were going to kill you and use your parts for our own purposes but our lord, Hircine, has told us that another Daedric prince has hold of your hand and that only though a proper sacrifice shall it release its hold.”

“And that ‘proper sacrifice’ is me, right?”

“Yes,” the Forsworn man says shortly. I can tell he’s getting annoyed with all my questions so I thrown in some info that I know will keep him talking. My legs are almost fully feeling.

“I can’t believe Lord Hircine, Prince of the Hunt, wants you guys dead so badly,” I say. I hear the sound of something heavy being dropped and then the sound of bare feet walking towards me. 

“Lord Hircine granted us protection and strength against the Nords. The last thing he would want is for us to be dead.” The Forsworn man practically spits out those last words.

“I dunno, my man,” I say nonchalantly. “I’ve spoken with Hircine and he seems to like the hunter over the hunted. And, right now, I have a feeling you’re the hunted.”

By this point, my legs are fully functional, so I sit up and scoot to the center of my cell. Sure enough, I am in an old tower with moss growing on pretty much everything and rusted metal holding up things like torches and the cell door. This cage will be simple to break out of. That’s all I can notice before the Forsworn guy blocks my view by standing in front of the cage door.

A Briarheart. His deer skull headdress and the gaping hole in his chest with a briar heart bulb firmly implanted gives it away even if his standard Forsworn animal hide outfit doesn’t.

“In what world would the Forsworn ever be anything less than the top predator?” the man asks rhetorically. “We aren’t called the ‘mad men’ of the Reach for nothing. Everyone who goes up against us is a fool and dies a terrible death.”

“Yeah, but that Nord lady you left for dead on the road back there is probably slowly working her way through this fort, killing everyone in her path.” I pause for effect because I love the drama of it all. “Just to get to me.”

The Briarheart laughs and steps back from the cage door. 

“Sure, and you’re going to break out of that cage and cook a nice meal,” the Briarheart snorts. “Tell me more unrealistic things as I prepare to sacrifice you to Lord Hircine.”

The Briarheart walks off towards a side room so I try to stand up. Unfortunately, I am not the most coordinated of people so I end up having to push myself up using my face. I end up struggling into a standing position, my arms still tied behind my back, and I try to use my shoulder to wipe as much of the dirt from the cell’s floor off my face. By the time the Briarheart walks back over, I am leaning against the wall, calmly, as if I haven’t a care in the world. Or, at least I hope it looks like that. Like I said—for the drama.

“I’m glad you can stand,” the Briarheart says. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to drag you from the cell to the sacrificial circle.”

“Are my hands going to be bound for the ceremony or will they be free to be in the proper position? I can’t imagine that hands bound behind my back is the best form in which to be sacrificed.”

The Briarheart looks confused. Good.

“The proper position? Why would Lord Hircine care if where your hands were? And I realize that this is a ploy to get me to cut your bonds so you can try to fight.”

Damn.

“Well,” I continue. “You bound my hands really loosely and the blood from trying to cut the orb off has made my wrists pretty slick. Slick enough that, with a little effort, I can probably slide right out of these bonds. So, it really doesn’t matter whether you cut them or not. They’re not exactly effective.”

Just then, I see the door open down the hallway behind the Briarheart. A figure walks into the shadows and, on the off chance that it’s Lydia, I keep talking.

“Also, seeing that I know Hircine personally, I think I should be sacrificed in the proper exaltation pose. You know, arms up, palms facing up in offering.” The figure rolls carefully from the shadowed hallway to underneath a table nearby, just on the other side of the room from me. And from this angle, I can tell exactly who it is. 

It’s definitely Lydia.

Meanwhile, the Briarheart has pursed his lips in consideration.

“I should also mention that I’ve completely accepted that I’m going to be sacrificed,” I lie hopefully convincingly. “Also, this orb has been nothing but trouble since I got stuck with it.”

“Okay,” the Briarheart says finally, either to shut me up or because he’s decided that I have a point. “Since you’ve accepted your fate and won’t try to attack me, I’ll remove your bonds, but you’re staying in the cage until it’s time in case you decide to change your mind.”

The Briarheart pulls a key from somewhere in his outfit that looks suspiciously like a deerskin loincloth and opens the cage door. I turn my back towards him so he can cut my bonds and so that he will—hopefully—take me turning my back as me trusting him.

And, evidently, it works because my wrists are soon free. I turn around, rubbing my wrist with my free hand before coiling back and launching my Meridia’s Beacon-filled hand directly into the Briarheart’s face. He goes reeling back, clutching his face with one hand and reaching out with his other to catch keep his balance. The Briarheart—now with a broken nose—slashes with his knife at me and I easily dodge him, scooting along the wall until I can get his back completely to Lydia. 

She steps carefully out of the shadows and sneaks up behind the enraged Forsworn as I swing the orb wildly to keep his attention. With a quick movement, the point of her sword emerges from where the briar heart bulb lived, effectively killing the man. I pick up the heart and put it in my pocket. 

“Oh, that’s just nasty,” Lydia says when she sees me pocket it. “You’re not going to wash it off or anything?”

“What? No! It’s a trophy! It needs to be adorned with the blood of its former body. Would you clean a set of antlers before mounting them on your wall?”

“Yes. I definitely would. What the hell is wrong with you?”

I shrug and go in for a hug, which Lydia accepts with a hug of her own.

“I thought you were dead for sure,” she says.

“Honestly, Lydia, the Briarheart said they let you for dead in the road, so I was positive you were fine,” I reply.

“I could have been seriously wounded, you know,” Lydia says as she leans against the wall to watch me loot the place. The side room the Forsworn had wandered off to has a chest in it and I make sure to open it fully and carefully search it this time. No sense in getting both hands stuck to stuff.

“Yeah, but I knew you’d be fine,” I counter, still pawing through the chest. There’s really just armor and jewelry in here. “Also, what happened when I got knocked out?”

“Well,” she begins. “You remember the bandits, right? I took out the one in the road, you took out the archer in the rocks next to your hiding spot, and you knocked the big guy with the warhammer back onto my sword after you fell down.”

“Hey,” I say, standing up and closing the chest. “You very obviously tripped me on my way to the other archer hiding in the rocks.”

“Anyway,” Lydia continues with a small smile, “I pushed the guy off my sword just in time to see you literally get shot in the head by an arrow. Turns out there was a group of Forsworn heading to Broken Tower Redoubt and they saw the bright flash given off by the orb when the big guy hit it. They came over, took out the third archer who was hiding down the hill, and then went after us. The archer you were heading towards ran off so the Forsworn focused all their efforts on us. You were really out of it—honestly, if it weren’t for your dragon blood and the fact that you actually pulled the arrow out of your own skull, you would be dead—so the Briarheart hit you with the side of his axe while the others distracted me and then began dragging your body down the road. I would have followed but they were too many and they ended up leaving me in a bloody heap after they got bored.”

“Holy shit, Lydia,” I breathe. “And yet here you stand.”

“Yeah,” Lydia says with a chuckle. “I had packed some of your potions for the trip because I knew we’d get into trouble somehow, so I drank one of the big red ones and watched as some of the larger gashes sewed themselves up. It was kind of weird but also kind of really cool. Then, I simply followed the drag marks down the road until getting here. The only problem is that I came in really quietly and I don’t think anyone noticed. Which means—“

“Which means they’re probably all still hanging out in this—what did you call it? ‘Broken Tower Redoubt’ was it? Pretty cool name.”

“They called it that. And it makes sense. It’s an old fort, with towers, that’s falling apart from age. The name is kind of self-explanatory.”

“Ridiculous names aside, we should probably go,” I say. “We can try to sneak out way out or we can go through with our weapons drawn, ready for anything.”

Lydia thinks it over for a bit before deciding.

“Sneaking was fun, so we should see how far we can get,” she began, “but I know that one of us—“

“Probably you,” I interject.

“Probably me,” Lydia agrees, “will end up making enough noise to alert them, at which point we’ll have to fight.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I say.

We head down the hallway quietly and gently ease open the door. It’s raining and nighttime, which will make their sneaking much easier. What will not make their sneaking easier is the woman standing just past the doorway near a ledge. At least her back is to the door.

I look at Lydia and she seems to understand what I’m thinking, giving me a nod. I nod back and open the door a little wider.

Lydia quickly rolls through the doorway and books it silently to the right to hide on the hill behind the tower, while I step carefully up behind the Forsworn lady. I raise my hand with the orb in it and bring it down with a CRACK onto the woman’s skull, sending her flying off the ledge and onto one of the lower battlements of the fort.

I step quickly back from the ledge and walk over to where Lydia is hiding, hearing the sounds of another Forsworn woman discovering the lady’s body.

“I’m pretty certain I killed that Forsworn woman,” I tell her, “but there’s another woman down there, and she’s getting kind of suspicious about this ledge. We should move.”

Lydia and I skirt the tower and find a small ledge where we can easily drop down onto the lower battlement. It’s a ten foot drop but part of the drop involves sliding down the hillside, so I go first, quickly followed by Lydia. We end up next to another tower, unsurprisingly broken and crumbling, and this one has another woman. She’s working on a grindstone, sharpening an axe that can really only be made from human bone. 

“Okay, so we should avoid her if we can,” I hear Lydia say as I try to get a better view of the Forsworn. 

“Yeah, or her next weapons will be us?” I ask, rhetorically. I tuck and roll to the side of the tower wall and end up directly in the line of sight of the second woman. She’s dragging her definitely dead compatriot towards the grindstone lady, probably intent on using her body for parts. I tuck and roll back to Lydia.

“You know the lady I was talking about a few minutes ago?” I whisper. “The one who was suspicious about the ledge I knocked the first lady from?”

“Yes?” Lydia whispers back, confused.

“Well, she’s headed this way right now, and she has the first lady’s body with her. We should move.”

“What? Move where? We’re literally hiding in the shadows between two towers, while it’s raining. I’m pretty sure that anywhere else would be a worse hiding place.”

“I still think we should move. She may not have seen me roll, but she definitely knows someone pushed her comrade off that ledge and she’s bound to be looking in every dark corner for the culprit.”

“Okay,” Lydia hissed. “Where do you propose we go?”

“Um, how about back up the hill?”

“That is the stupidest plan I have ever heard.”

“Okay, well, where would you go?”

“I wouldn’t go anywhere! I would stick right here with my back to the—“

I slap my hand over Lydia’s mouth to silence her as Suspicious Lady walks by, dragging Ledge Woman up the stairs and into the crumbled tower for Grindstone Lady to work on. She doesn’t even glance into the shadows where we’re hiding, probably because neither Lydia nor I are breathing. As soon as Suspicious Lady and Grindstone Lady have their back to us, we both dash as quietly as possible to the side of the tower wall. 

“I told you we didn’t need to move,” Lydia breathes as we shuffle along the side of the wall. I can almost see the road from here, but it’s still another eight foot drop to the ground from this tower’s ledge. And sliding down the hill will make too much noise.

“What was that?” one of the Forsworn woman says, probably Suspicious Lady. I look at Lydia accusingly as she looks at me with wide, apologetic eyes. 

“And I told you that that Forsworn lady was super suspicious,” I hiss at her. I guess sliding down the hill will have to do. 

Lydia and I hasten to where the hill sloped away from the tower’s ledge and carefully scuttle down to the road, knocking rocks and pebbles everywhere. The light from Suspicious Lady’s torch glows closer as we stumble to regain out balance. As soon as we’re both upright, we run.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a bit longer than the previous two

“So much for getting to Dragonbridge by nightfall,” I say as we turn north off the road and down a dirt path. We should really get off the road if the Forsworn decide to come after us. Plus, this side path looks like it heads down to the river, and that’s the direction we need to go in.

“I knew we weren’t going to make it in time when it took us almost six hours to walk from Whiterun to Rorikstead,” Lydia says, slowing down to a walk. No sense in making noise while running if we’re taking a sneaky side path. “How do you even get anything done on your own?”

“Well, if I’m being honest, I tend to stop and pick flowers when I adventure,” I admit. “They don’t take up much room in my pack and I can make things from them when I get home. Or I can eat them. Some flowers are magical, you know.” Lydia simply shakes her head at me, accepting my weirdness.

“That explains why you picked up that briar heart bulb back in the tower. What magical properties does it have, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I don’t mind at all!” Lydia has never shown interest in my random junk before. “A briar heart bulb carries some of the properties of the Briarheart—in small amounts, granted—so using it in potions or spells, or even eating it, can utilize some of those properties. For instance, most Briarhearts have amazing magical abilities, so the main thing a briar heart bulb does is make your magic just a little bit easier and stronger. Briarhearts also come into the world through the magical powers of hagravens communing with Hircine, thereby granting the briar heart bulb a somewhat paralytic—“

A Stormcloak camp? This close to a Forsworn tower? Why hadn’t they cancelled each other out yet?

“Greetings, travelers!” one of the Stormcloak soldiers says upon seeing us, poking the logs in a crackling fire. The presence of Lydia, clearly a Nord, must have clued them in that we weren’t here to attack them. “Care to have a seat by the fire and warm yourself? The rain in the Reach is awfully cold.”

I glance at Lydia and she seems confused. I’ll explain it to her later. Or she’ll figure it out.

“Well met, friend! Thanks for the invitation.” I sit down on the ground near the fire and stick my free hand out, letting the heat warm my stiff fingers. The hand with the orb stuck to it gets rested in my lap to avoid drawing attention. Lydia folds herself down next to me.

“Do you know what time it is?” Lydia asks.

“Aye,” the soldier says. “About 11:30 at night. Masser and Secunda would be just overhead, were there not rainclouds in the way.”

“Thanks,” Lydia replies. I glance over at her and she looks at me with imploring eyes. I decide to finally clear things up for her.

“Say, friend,” I say towards the Stormcloak. “What’s a garrison of Stormcloak soldiers doing in a small canyon in the wilds? I thought the Reach was a Stormcloak allied hold?”

“Ah, well, this camp sits just below the hold border with Haafingar,” the man reveals. “Ulfric Stormcloak wanted us here in case the Imperials decided to march south and take Markarth. We are all that stands in the way of them taking the reach.” He finishes his last statement proudly. 

“Wow, that’s quite a task Ulfric’s given you,” I tell him truthfully. “I hope you get to fight some Imperials and succeed in protecting the Reach.”

“Do I sense you to are fans of our cause?” he asks both Lydia and I. Before Lydia can speak, I answer quickly.

“We believe that this dragon nonsense needs to be figured out before this war can be finished. It’s not fair to force either side to fight the other and some dragons. It’s not honorable.”

The Stormcloak soldier narrows his eyes at us before nodding in agreement.

“I suppose you’re right,” he says finally. “I wouldn’t want the fight to be too easy against them. And an Imperial soldier won’t die honorably if he’s not bested in one-on-one combat. That’s just not the way we do it in Skyrim.” 

“Exactly,” I agree. “The only thing that can come from trying to win the war before dealing with the dragons is the Imperial army becoming martyrs and seeming like the underdog for going up against the Stormcloak army and some dragons. That’ll just make people side with them more. It would be lies—all lies—and all because some dragon jerks swooped in and stole your victory.”

“You’re right!” the Stormcloak soldier stands up. “I’m going to go talk to my captain and tell him that we need to focus just as much effort on getting rid of these dragons as we’re focusing on getting rid of the Empire. Both of them don’t belong in Skyrim!” With that, the soldier storms off towards a big tent, a fire lit in his heart against dragons. I nod to myself for a job well done.

“What the hell was that?” Lydia asks incredulously.

“I’ve been able to avoid being drafted by either side through convincing people to focus on the ‘growing dragon menace’ instead of focusing on getting me to pick a side,” I explain. “A lot of people on both sides are more angry at the fact that the war has come to a stalemate than they are at the other side, so if you tell them—or in this case, heavily imply—that the dragons are the reason their cause is faltering, they’ll gladly work of get rid of any dragons that cross their path.”

“I see,” Lydia says conspiratorially. “That’s weirdly clever. I’m proud of you. You’ve only been here a short time and you’re already manipulating both sides of a province-wide conflict.”

“Why, thank you,” I say, fake bowing by ducking my head and waving my hand. The hand with the beacon stuck to it. I quickly hide my hand back in my lap and glance around, checking if anyone saw. It doesn’t look like it.

“Should we keep moving or do you want to rest here for the night?” I ask Lydia. I don’t actually need sleep, considering I got knocked out for several hours earlier. That counts as sleep, right?

“We might as well make camp here,” Lydia says with a yawn. “These guys consider us allies so we should be pretty safe.” Lydia pulls out a blanket and bundles it up before lying down to rest her head on it like a pillow. In seconds, she’s asleep and gently snoring. 

 

Sunrise comes with an eerie beauty, probably because I’m carrying an artifact of the Daedric prince of the dawn. Weird-ass Daedric influences.

I didn’t sleep all night. Lydia did, but I can’t blame her at all. She had almost died the day before purely because I had tried to help out in a small fight and ended up luring a pack of Forsworn over with a strange flash given off by the beacon, which is still stuck to my hand. This thing doesn’t appear to have a time-sensitive release.

Still, sunrise is pretty and it’s a new day.

I reach over and gently shake Lydia. She groans and throws a gentle punch that I easily dodge. 

“What time is it?” she asks tiredly. 

“About 7 am, my friend,” I reply, stretching my legs out towards the still lit fire. The soldier we had talked last night hadn’t come back after talking to his captain, probably because the captain thought he was delirious from lack of sleep. I hadn’t planned to sleep so I had tended the fire, letting my thoughts run circles around each other, eventually leading to me realizing that I am responsible for Lydia almost dying.

“Good. I slept a solid 7-ish ours.” Lydia relaxes onto her back with her eyes closed, still pretty much half asleep.

“Yeah, I’m proud of you. You didn’t wake up once, and I even knocked a pot full of stew into the fire early this morning.”

“Stew?” Lydia sits bolt upright, no longer sleepy. 

Fuck. That’s right. Neither of us has eaten since about noon yesterday. 

“Shit! Lydia, I’m sorry,” I say. “I totally forgot that you need to eat regularly. This makes this intended-to-be-stolen-later jug of stew seem like a pleasantly forethought container of friendship.” I pull a sealed pot out of my pack and hand it to her with a spoon.

“You were going to steal their soup?” Lydia asks through several mouthfuls of venison stew. 

“No,” I correct her. “I was going to steal the pot full of stew that I made. I decided that they probably have others and that taking this pot wouldn’t effect them at all.”

Lydia chuckled and kept eating. At least she understands that I like to take stuff and only berates me occasionally to give the stuff back. And now I won’t need to steal their pot because it will be empty because Lydia is literally eating it all. Which is fine. It’s totally fine. I already had some this morning before I spilled most of it into the fire. 

That’s also why I tended the fire this morning. Apparently, if you spill something in it, it’s your responsibility to clean it up—which was totally not a susrpise to me, nope—so the soldier who had just arrived to camp and saw me do this gave me a big stick and said, in an incredibly surly voice, “Clean up your mess, milk drinker.” What a jerk.

“I had a look at some guy’s map and, based on where we are, we can follow the river all the way up to Dragonbridge.” That was a bald-faced lie. I hadn’t looked at any map. Meridia’s Beacon had practically told me that following the river would take us to the ruins of Mount Kilkreath, but I wasn’t going to tell Lydia that. She might then insist on looking at a map and then I would have to tell her that I didn’t pack mine. 

And she would be disappointed. I don’t want Lydia to be any more disappointed in me than she needs to be. 

“Good, because the map I brought” of course, Lydia brought her own map because she knows me so well “agrees with you.” I look over at Lydia who was still spooning stew into her mouth but now had a full map of Skyrim in front of her. 

“We can actually get down to the river from here,” Lydia continues, “and then there are only a few waterfalls between here and Dragonbridge, but they shouldn’t be too hard to navigate.” She deftly folds up her map with one hand while finishing up the stew with her other. She slides the map into her pack and slides the pot plus the spoon towards me.

“What do I do with this?” I ask her.

“Go down to the river and wash them,” Lydia replies, as if I’m a crazy person. “That way you can figure out if there’s a good path down there or if we’ll need to cross the bridge to the other side.”

“There’s a bridge?”

“Yes, there’s a bridge a little farther down the road from this turn off. Even though the road only goes south to Karthwasten, there’s an easy enough path just south of the bridge that can take us down to the riverbank.” 

“Wow, you have this really planned out,” I say as I grab the pot and spoon and stand. “It’s almost as if you highlighted routes we may have had to take in the event something went wrong.” Lydia smiles serenely at me as she closes her pack and stands. 

“I’m going to go thank the Stormcloak captain for letting us stay for the night,” Lydia says. “Go wash those and scout out a path before bringing them back up here.” 

With that, Lydia heads off towards the big tent. I trudge down the hill towards the river, looking for a clearly defined path. Of course, there isn’t one—this is a sneaky camp in the wilds. The only path to it is the easily defensible one from the road. Luckily, there are no mubcrabs by the river so I wash the pot and the spoon in peace.

Until I hear a shout from the camp. I grab the now-clean pot and spoon and clamber up the hill back to the Stormcloak camp. What could have gone wrong in the literally minute I was away? Did the Forsworn finally come down the road and attack? Was there a dragon? Did Lydia say something and pick a fight? 

I was kind of hoping for the last option because Lydia never picks a fight where she’s not prepared to kick some ass. Unfortunately, I get back up the hill to the camp only to find Lydia with her sword drawn and pointed at the Stormcloak captain. 

“Lydia, what the hell is going on?” I say as I brandish Meridia’s Beacon at the now large gathering of Stormcloak soldiers around us. They’re all pointing their weapons at Lydia but Lydia still has her sword pointed at the captain, so I also focus my attention on the captain. “Lydia,” I repeat.

“He’s a Volkihar vampire,” Lydia says. I’m fairly certain that the Stormcloak soldiers around us have no idea what a ‘Volkihar’ vampire is but they know what a normal vampire is. Some of them turn their weapons on their captain while the others just look confused.

“How do you know?”

“I saw him drinking a literal potion of blood after getting out of a coffin.”

“What.” Well, that’s pretty damning evidence.

“Housecarl, Dragonborn, listen,” the Stormcloak captain-vampire-person says. How does he know I’m the Dragonborn? And that Lydia is my housecarl? This is weird.

“Why?” Lydia demands. It’s clear that the soldiers caught on to the titles, but it’s also clear that they’re not sure which of us is the Dragonborn and which of us is the housecarl. Which is laughable because I am clearly the Dragonborn. I don’t know how they can’t tell.

“Because I’m not the threat you think I am,” the captain explains. I gently push Lydia’s raised sword arm down to lower her weapon. She’s obviously angry about it but lets me, trusting that I have a plan. 

“How so? Because a Volkihar vampire seems like a pretty big threat,” I hedge. “From the several I’ve met, you guys tend to be kind of provoke-able.” After meeting Harkon and his coven upon returning his daughter, they were all fully ready to fight me, even though I came to their castle of my own volition, knowing they were crazy.

“I’m only a Volkihar vampire by blood,” the captain began, “not by association. When I met Harkon about 50 years ago, he admired my determination and passion for Skyrim and offered me the chance to be a Volkihar vampire lord. Of course, I said yes. Immortality and near infinite strength were promised and, shortly after I was turned, immortality and strength were achieved. I had the power to do almost anything.”

“This isn’t sounding very non-threatening,” I caution.

“Exactly!” The Stormcloak captain throws his hands up in the air in exasperation. “All Harkon wanted was to find the elder scroll that was hidden away with his daughter several thousand years ago. He figured that my love and knowledge of Skyrim would make me the perfect asset in his hunt for its location. But I didn’t want to spend all my time searching the province for some young woman and a clunky elder scroll. I wanted to use my powers to change how the world functioned.

“My first idea was so use my vampiric strength to rebuild many of the crumbling ruins around Skyrim. Maybe people would visit old military forts more if they weren’t actively dangerous to visit.” He has a point. Several towers have collapsed while I’ve been in them and the only thing that saved me was the dragon blood in my veins. “I thought that people would want to learn more about their past and history by visiting old ruins, but it turned out that, as soon as I made a place safe to visit, bandits and the like would move in. So I simply stopped rebuilding ruins. 

“Then, I decided that I could help run the province by getting a job with the High King of Skyrim. Much like the ruler of Skingrad in Cyrodiil during the Oblivion Crisis, I kept my vampiric nature a secret from almost everyone. The only people who knew—aside from Harkon himself—were the High King and the College in Winterhold. I was able to help the High King manage the different holds by both travelling to certain cities for diplomacy and by listening to the peoples’ thoughts on how Skyrim should be. 

“When the Empire and the Aldmeri Dominion came to Skyrim, I was enraged. This was not their home and yet the way they treated the land and her citizens sickened me. I went to Ulfric Stormcloak, explained who I was and where I’ve been, and he welcomed me into the fold.”

At this point, all of the Stormcloak soldiers have lowered their weapons and have either left or sat down to listen to their captain talk. And, I have to admit that his story rings with truth. 

“So, if you’re simply here as a Stormcloak captain, why did Lydia draw her sword on you?” I ask him. Lydia wouldn’t pull her sword on just anyone.

“Oh!” the captain exclaims in surprise, clearly thinking that I was going to claim his story was lies. “She saw a passed out soldier on the floor of my tent and assumed I’d killed him.”

Lydia puts away her sword and puts her hands on her hips. 

“Why was he passed out on the floor, then? You can’t blame me for assuming the worst after walking into your tent and seeing you close a coffin lid while sipping from a blood potion.”

“We wandered in late last night, probably around midnight, said something about dragons, and then passed out. He was supposed to be manning the fire but I smelled mead on his breath and figured that he’d been talking to some travellers after getting good and drunk.”

So that’s where the soldier from last night went. 

“I can only assume that you two are the two travellers he was talking to,” the captain finishes. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some battle plans to go over.” And with that, he goes back into his tent. 

I look at Lydia. 

“Not a word,” she says.

“I would have done the same thing, man,” I tell her as I pick up my bag. “On an unrelated note, there’s a clear path down to the water’s edge. Actually, that’s a lie—there’s no path at all. However, there are very few big rocks to trip over, so we can make our own path.”

Lydia heads off towards the riverbank and I follow close behind. Lydia can be ridiculously suspicious sometimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is turning into an update-every-day kind of thing


	4. Chapter 4

I fall into the river. A lot.

But it’s not a bad thing. I like the water and since the river Karth flows towards Solitude, I figure that I can always just relax and get pushed all the way to Dragonbridge. 

Lydia, ever vigilant, walks along the riverbank without slipping and fights off the mudcrabs that lurk there, collecting their meat for whenever we stop to eat. I should probably be helping her fight the crabs and stop playing in the water.

“Hey, Lydia?” I call over to her from my spot in the leisurely moving water. As long as I stay in the moving sections, I can easily float on my back and get pushed at a walking pace. 

“I swear to the gods, if you ask me to join you in the Karth, I will shoot you in the leg,” Lydia says as she rips the legs off of her latest mudcrab kill.

“No,” I clarify with a laugh. “I was going to ask if you wanted me to carry anything. Since I’m not actually doing anything but float down the river, I may as well carry the heavy shit.” Lydia shoved the legs into a leather sack and tied the sack to her pack.

“Weirdly, I think I’m okay with carrying this stuff,” Lydia replies. “You still have the beacon stuck to your hand. Plus, if you get attacked by a slaughterfish and flail about, we wont lose half of our supplies.”

“What? There aren’t any slaughterfish this far inland. They’re a saltwater fish. The only fish that would even get near me in this river are the little ones, like Silverside Perch or River Bettys.”

“Have you never been in Lake Ilinalta?” Lydia says incredulously. “Or lake Honrich?”

“Or Lake Yorgrim? Or Lake Geir?” I mimic her tone exactly. “Lydia, just because they’re large bodies of water doesn’t automatically mean that there are slaughterfish. I’m telling you—slaughterfish are a saltwater breed and venturing this far inland, despite the slight brackishness of the water, would damage their organs.”

“You are literally an idiot,” Lydia says, throwing her hands in the air. 

We come to a jog in the river where a tributary the western mountains joins up with the river Karth. I know for a fact that there are Forsworn in these parts, though I’m not sure how we haven’t run into any yet. Maybe they’re afraid of mudcrabs?

“Hey, speaking of slaughterfish,” Lydia says suddenly. “You should probably get out of the water.”

“Lydia, you’re probably seeing a mudcrab walking along the riverbed,” I say, still floating in the river. I firmly believe slaughterfish are saltwater fish. I’m pretty sure Herbane wrote a bestiary volume about them. 

Something bites my ass. Firmly.

“What.”

I reach with my free hand down to feel for whatever’s down by my now-probably-bleeding ass-cheeks and feel a fish. Not something that feels fish-like. An actual fish—scales, pointy dorsal fin, little pointy pectoral fins, a wide tailfin, and a set of teeth that are really not very nice, considering they just tried to steal some of my fingers.

“Holy shit, Lydia.” 

“I told you slaughterfish don’t give a fuck about your saltwater-freshwater nonsense,” Lydia says. “They live and swim where the please and are responsible for the deaths of many people each year.”

“Yeah, okay, you’re right,” I admit as I swim quickly to land. This thing is following me pretty closely. 

Lydia draws her bow and aims for the fish as I crawl up onto the riverbank. We both watch as it practically beaches itself to follow me so I give it a swift kick that it easily catches with its jaws.

“Lydia.” Lydia starts laughing.

“Lydia, it has my foot.” She’s still laughing. 

“Lydia, do something.” More laughter.

“Lydia. I don’t want to die because of a fish. It’s not dignified.” Lydia is a jerk.

Lydia manages to lodge an arrow in the slaughterfish despite her laughter and tosses me the carcass. 

“I’ve butchered literally every mudcrab we’ve come across since we left the Stormcloak camp,” she says. “You get to do this one since your lack of basic Skyrim knowledge literally came and bit you in the ass.”

“Well, jokes on you because I was going to harvest stuff from it anyway,” I reply petulantly, grabbing the fish and carefully removing as much intact scaly skin as possible. Luckily, this makes removing the flesh from the ribcage pretty easy, and I manage to have two semi-edible slaughterfish filets in minutes. 

“We should figure out a way to get across this confluence,” I tell Lydia as I gaze across the two rivers. “But if there are killer ass-eating fish out there…”

“My thane,” Lydia begins.

“Yes, I realize that ‘ass-eating’ means something else, but my butt-cheeks hurt and the only thing to blame is that damn fish.”

“No, the only thing to blame is you for insisting that the river can carry you all the way to Dragonbridge.”

I can see that Lydia and I are simply wasting time arguing, so I turn away from her and try to climb a nearby tree to see if there’s a bridge nearby.

There is not. 

However, there are several little islands throughout the watery battlefield, so, if we move fast, we can probably make it pretty easily to the other side. But there’s no telling how many angry fish are between us and each island. 

And, based on the slaughterfish we just dealt with, any fish that we piss off will simply follow us until either it’s dead or we’re dead. 

“Hey, Lydia?” I ask. “How deep do you think this water is?”

“I don’t know; maybe a few feet? Why?” she replies.

“I have an idea but I’m going to need to do some math first.” I grab a nearby twig and smooth out some of the sand on the riverbank, preparing to work out the kinks in my plan. But I’m really lazy and I’m sure it’ll work fine. 

“Lydia, the risk I’m about to take may look stupid,” I begin, “but I want you to know that it is a carefully calculated plan.” With that, I grab my shield off of my pack and run towards the water, leaping forward into the air and carefully placing the concave side of the shield at an angle under my feet. Ideally, I should hit the water and the force of my landing combined with the momentum built by running and leaping forward should propel me along the surface of the water towards one of the little islands, saving me from the angry teeth of the slaughterfish.

Except something must have not worked out because I am now descending into the water at an alarming rate.

“Lydia! I need you to check my math because apparently I’m terrible at it!” I yell right before my head slips below the water.

 

“If I were to open a dictionary or bestiary, activate a dwarven lexicon, read an elder scroll, or consult an actual god and ask ‘hey, if you had to describe to me what an idiot is, what would you say,’ they would literally show me a picture of you,” Lydia tells me as she wraps yet another bandage around my leg. 

“That’s not a very nice way to say ‘Thane, your plan was inspired but the world didn’t appear to agree with you,’” I grumble. The slaughterfish had gotten me as soon as I was fully submerged. Swimming towards the little island ended up only half-working because the three—three—slaughterfish that were following me all grabbed my legs and pulled me back in. 

Luckily, Lydia had pulled an enormous chunk of bark off of a nearby tree and used it as a small boat. It’s good to know that both Lydia and I are inexhaustible resources of amazing plans. She had used a battleaxe as a paddle and carefully “sailed” over to the island I was struggling on and then used the battleaxe as an axe and killed the three fish while managing to not cut my legs off. She truly does care.

Lydia finishes wrapping this bandage and securely tucks the free end into the wrapped folds. She gives my legs a once-over to make sure she’s bandaged everything and then helps me to my feet.

“We should take the boat across,” she declares.

“Lydia, that’s not a boat,” I say, putting my hands on my hips. “It’s literally a piece of tree.”

“Anything made of wood is technically a piece of tree. Stop nitpicking and let’s go.”

We get onto her raft—it’s not a boat—and Lydia uses her battleaxe as a paddle again, deftly steering through the currents created by the merging rivers. We end up on the other side of the confluence and neither of us says anything when we don’t steer to shore. 

“You know…” I begin. The current is strong and smooth.

“I think you’re right…” Lydia agrees without needing me to finish. She keeps paddling.

“If you want, I can use my sword as a rudder so that all you need to do is control the speed.” I’d use one of my hands but my only free one is currently holding me onto the raft and I don’t want to lose any fingers off the beacon’s hand.

“That would be good, yes.” Sweet.

And with that, Lydia and I are on the same page again. We positively glide down the Karth towards Dragonbridge and the waterfalls we encounter are child’s play to navigate. By using destruction spells, I freeze parts of the water to guide us down the falls, melting them again after we’re safe. 

We end up getting to Dragonbridge around 3 in the afternoon and the sun is hot. We give the raft to the lady who runs the mill and then we head into the local in—Four Shields Tavern. I sit down in one of the chairs by the fire, Lydia sits in one next to me, and we both kick our boots off to let them dry. 

Relaxing in actual chairs is nice. Sitting by the fire is nice. Everything is just so nice.

“Man, it feels like just yesterday we were in Breezehome, debating about what to do with the orb,” I say to Lydia as I lazily lift my hand. The flames dance on the pearly surface and shimmer in the dimples covering Meridia’s Beacon. 

“That’s because it was two days ago,” Lydia says, her eyes closed as she lounges next to me. 

By the divines, has it only been two days? All of this nonsense with the Forsworn and the Stormcloaks feels like it’s taken a month off my life.

“We should head to the ruins tomorrow,” I propose. I can feel my eyelids growing heavy. 

“I agree.” Lydia stands up from her chair and walks over to the innkeeper, handing over a few coins before turning back to me. “Grab our stuff and come on. I’ve rented us a room for the day…the night…? For until tomorrow.” She turns and walks through a doorway.

I hoist our bags into my arms, reach down and snag our boots from next to the fire, and trot over to where Lydia went. She’s rented us a room with a double bed and a few tables with chairs, so I set our packs down in corner of the room. I being unloading some of our supplies to speed up the drying process, but literally everything was waterlogged, so I spread as much of it as possible on the tables and chairs before giving up.

I help Lydia undo all the little clasps of her steel armor and set it on the floor to help dry out the inner lining. She helps me out of the Ebony Mail, and, soon, we’re both swaddled in blankets and furs and fast asleep. 

Tomorrow, we’ll take the Beacon back and then we’re definitely taking a carriage back to Whiterun.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in one day? I know, wild.

I don’t wake up until the morning is well underway. The birds are chirping outside, the sun has risen above the trees, and I am incredibly sore from all the swimming I did yesterday. However, the inn bed is very comfy. Even after having to share it with Lydia. 

Lydia woke up several times in the night—or so she told me, seeing as I did not wake up for any of them—and she thinks that it was due to both sleeping too long in one go and to her paranoia. Even though she can understand that an inn in a small town is a perfectly safe place, her brain reminds her constantly that danger could lurk around every corner. I do not envy her, but I am somewhat thankful that she’s like the way she is because she’s saved my ass more times than I can count. And I recognize that her paranoia is part of the reason why she’s such a good adventurer and also such a good housecarl.

As much as I appreciate Lydia, she is very structure and plan oriented, so as I lay in the bed, slowly waking up and carefully stretching my sore limbs, she is up and moving around, repacking our now dry supplies into our respective packs. One of the times when she’d woken up during the night, she’d asked the innkeeper if she could put our armor near the fire to help it dry and the innkeeper agreed. Lydia had gone and retrieved our now perfectly dry armor and set it on the chairs in the room. She now looks like she doesn’t quite want to put it on.

“We’ll have to wear it when we leave,” I say from my position within the sheets and furs on the bed. “We may as well strap ourselves into our armor now so we can get re-used to the feel.”

“You say that but I don’t see you moving to do it,” Lydia replies, somewhat jealously.

“You can, in fact, get back into the bed and nap some more.” I roll over so that her side of the bed is once again free of my limbs. “We set our own schedule and Mount Kilkreath is visible from here. We don’t need to leave until, like, lunch, and it’s only about 9:30 am.”

“I thought you wanted to ‘strap ourselves into our armor’ in order to get used to it,” Lydia says.

“I changed my mind because I’m more comfy than I’ve ever been.”

“All the more reason to get out of bed.”

I let out a long, petulant groan before slowly sliding out of the layers of warmth and softness and onto the floor. Because I’m a dramatic piece of shit. The Beacon hits the floor with a dull thump and I remember that it’s still attached to my hand. It’s become quite easy to forget that it’s there. A gently pulse of light accompanies the dull thump, probably due to the weight of my arm making its collision with the floor decently strong.

“That’s going to be pretty nice to get rid of, don’t you think?” Lydia says.

“Finally being able to use both hands again? We should celebrate after.” I lazily get up from the floor and sit on the edge of the bed. “I’m tired.”

“I know because I am, too, but we have to go to the ruins today, which means we have to put on our armor and then walk out of this inn.”

“Fine, I guess you’re right, but only because…you’re exactly right. I don’t know where I was planning to take that argument.” I stand up from the bed and walk over to Lydia.

I pick up her armor and she stands with her arms out, letting me carefully work around her to tighten and secure all the little buckles and clasps. When she finally has her cuirass, boots, gauntlets, and silly looking helmet on, I strap her sword around her waist and hand her her shield. 

“You look so put together,” I say, standing back and putting my hands on my hips. “Like a true adventurer.”

“Well,” Lydia says, drawing her sword to check the shine in the dim inn lighting. “Good old-fashioned steel armor does have a certain dignity and preparedness to it. And half the look is having it on correctly, so thank you for helping me with that.”

“It was completely ulterior motivated because I now need help with my own armor,” I say, shimmying the Ebony Mail over my head and sticking my arms out. Lydia laughs softly and helps me, clipping me into what is arguably to most comfortable armor I own. It fits to my curves while not pinching anywhere, which cannot be said about Lydia’s steel armor. If she turns a certain way, she can literally get pinched so hard that she bleeds, which is why she wears clothes under her still heavily lined armor.

Lydia finishes up with my armor and tosses me my helmet. 

“It’s official,” I say, putting my helmet on and then flexing. “We look badass. Let’s go return Meridia’s Beacon.” 

 

The ruins of Mount Kilkreath are literally visible from the porch of the Four Shields Tavern, and not just because of the eerie light emanating from the cloud cover directly onto a large statue of, presumably, Meridia. As Lydia and I get closer the pull from the orb gets stronger, and my hand starts to hurt. I wonder…if I lift my hand up in front of me, will the pain in my hand decrease?

As I test it out, I discover that yes, lifting my entire arm to hold the orb pointing at the statue makes the pain slightly less. I look quite ridiculous doing it, so I tough it out through the pain, knowing that it will eventually end when the beacon releases me.

However, as soon as we get close to the temple, that voice—the one from when I first picked up the orb—echoes in my brain, loud and sudden enough to make me falter in my steps as we walk.

LOOK AT MY TEMPLE, LYING IN RUIN. SO MUCH FOR THE CONSTANCY OF MORTALS, THEIR CRAFTS AND THEIR HEARTS. IF THEY LOVE ME NOT, HOW CAN MY LOVE REACH THEM?

“Wow, that was loud,” I say with a hand to my head. 

“What? Lydia asks, confused.

“The voice,” I explain. “It just yelled at me again.”

“What did it say?”

“To look at its temple, lying in ruins, and then she asked about love and mortals being temporal rather than eternal.”

“Wow, those are some big words, my thane. Don’t hurt yourself.”

“Shut up, Lydia. I also read the books I bring home.”

I lead the way around the temple until we happen upon a large staircase leading up to the statue. I trot up the staircase, the pain in my hand almost unbearable, and approach the statue, sticking the hand with the orb in between two glowing stone hands at the base of the statue. And then there’s blinding flash of light.

My eyes adjust and I realize that I’m floating high over Skyrim, higher than the top of the throat of the world. I look down and—oh god, I’ve made a mistake. I’m not usually afraid of heights but by the gods I’m up high. In fact, I’m pretty sure the sun is sitting in the air in front of me; I’m that high off the ground.

Wait.

No.

That’s definitely Meridia.

IT IS TIME FOR MY SPLENDOR TO RETURN TO SKYRIM. BUT THE TOKEN OF MY TRUTH LIES BURIED IN THE RUINS OF MY ONCE GREAT TEMPLE, NOW TAINTED BY A PROFANE DARKNESS SKITTERING WITHIN.

There was the voice again, reverberating within my skull.

“Hello?” I ask the shining ball of light in front of me. 

It’s simply a glowing ball of light, but I know it’s Meridia, Daedric prince of the dawn, the Lady of Infinite Energies, so I make a mental note to refer to the ball as a she.

“What would you like me to do?” I ask.

THE NECROMANCER MALKORAN DEFILES MY SHRINE WITH VILE CORRUPTIONS, TRAPPING LOST SOULS LEFT IN THE WAKE OF THIS WAR TO DO HIS BIDDING. WORSE STILL, HE USES THE POWER STORED WITHIN MY OWN TOKEN TO FUEL HIS FOUL DEEDS. I HAVE BROUGHT YOU HERE, MORTAL, TO BE MY CHAMPION. YOU WILL ENTER MY TEMPLE, RETRIEVE MY ARTIFACT, AND DESTROY THE DEFILER. GUIDE MY LIGHT THROUGH THE TEMPLE TO OPEN THE INNER SANCTUM AND DESTROY THE DEFILER.

Oo, an artifact? 

“What is this artifact of which you speak?” 

MORTALS CALL IT DAWNBREAKER, FOR IT WAS FORGED IN A HOLY LIGHT THAT BREAKS UPON MY FOES, BURNING AWAY CORRUPTION AND FALSE LIFE. YOU WILL ENTER MY SHRINE, DESTROY MALKORAN, AND RETRIEVE THIS MIGHTY BLADE.

It’s even better than I had hoped. I though she was gonna give me a ring. Which would have been great. I love shiny things.

“I like the sound of that, so I shall do as you ask.”

OF COURSE YOU WILL. I HAVE COMMANDED IT!

Well, psh. If she’s going to command me, maybe I won’t do it. But my hand still hurts. 

My hand.

I look down at my hand and see my palm. Not the orb, my actual palm. However, by looking down at my hand, I also realize two things. One, we are still very high in the air. And two, there looks to be a word wall slightly northwest of the temple. 

Suddenly, I see the ground rushing up to meet me, and as I brace for the impact that will surely be my death, there’s another flash of light.

And then I’m standing in front of the statue of Meridia, looking at the beacon as it hovers between the two stone hands. 

“I’m glad you’re not dead,” I hear Lydia say from behind me. I turn and look at her, sitting on the stone platform opposite the statue. “I saw you enveloped by a cloud of light—there’s really no other way to describe it—and then a winged ball of light picked you up and off you went into the sky. I figured you would either disappear entirely or get dropped, so I sat down and waited. And then you came gently back down and the winged ball set you down again. It would have sucked if you’d been dropped from there. You were a tiny, little dot in the sky.”

I’m about to reply when Meridia’s voice calls out again.

MALKORAN HAS FORCED THE DOORS SHUT. BUT THIS IS MY TEMPLE, AND IT RESPONDS TO MY DECREE. I WILL SEND DOWN A RAY OF LIGHT. GUIDE THIS LIGHT THROUGH MY TEMPLE AND ITS DOORS WILL OPEN.

“Whoa, even I heard it that time,” Lydia says. “Maybe she finally gets that we’re a team.”

“Lydia, do you really want to go through this ruin with me?” I ask. If she says no, I will fully accept that as an answer, because, frankly, I find this whole thing kind of confusing. 

“Yes,” Lydia answers. “I’ve come this far with you and you have to get used to having that hand free again, so you’ll probably need help fighting. Let’s go.”

“Lydia, I appreciate you so much.” 

Lydia and I walk down the steps and Lydia turns south as I remember what I saw earlier.

“Hold up—I have to check something,” I say before walking northeast of the steps and through the trees. Sure enough, there’s a word wall, so I place my hands on the wall and close my eyes, feeling the ancient energy flow into me. I hear a word in my mind and feel it’s meaning in my soul, knowing that the dragon I fought when I found the beacon gave me it’s soul so I could learn this word.

Elemental Fury.

“Sweet,” I say, stepping back from the wall. I walk back over to see Lydia sitting on the steps, waiting.

“What was that?” she asks.

“There was a word wall over there. I saw it when I was up in the sky, talking to Meridia.”

“Oh. Cool. What word was it?” 

“Su,” I say, trying not to shout it. “It means air. I think I have to use non-enchanted weapons, though, because it technically counts as an enchantment. Whatever.”

“Nice! One of these days, I’m going to ask the greybeards to help me learn a shout or two,” Lydia said, hoisting her pack onto her shoulder. “They have the meditation thing down.” 

“I can teach you the words and you can meditate on them on your own time, friend,” I tell her as we walk down the hill. “Just pick a shout and—well, I can do one or both of two things. I can literally shout it at you, so you can experience the shout for yourself and have a slightly deeper understanding of what it means. Or, I can tell you the words and what they mean and you can reflect on how those words may apply to different aspects of your life. Or, I can do both.”

We reach the door to the temple and Lydia pauses with her hand on the door.

“I don’t think you realize just how much I’m considering this,” Lydia says.

“I don’t think you realize how serious this proposal is,” I say back to her.

Lydia smiles and opens the door to the temple, motioning with a bow for me to enter. I smile and step through the threshold and immediately see a desiccated, dead body.


End file.
